


The Ravenmaster

by capalxii



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 19:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3866248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capalxii/pseuds/capalxii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tumblr user Weatherall prompted, "For a TTOI prompt, how about Malcolm as the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London (Malcolm/Jamie). Malcolm would be fond of smartass corvids." It's not really Malcolm/Jamie unless you squint really hard, but it's Malcolm, and Jamie, and ravens. Completely AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ravenmaster

There are a number of things that Jamie notices about the ravenmaster, the first of which is the respect of the birds. They are a playful bunch, teasing each other, yanking at tail feathers before scampering off, but they part for the ravenmaster as he makes his way across the green. The man himself nods to the birds—Jamie gets a sense that they are his birds, at least in his mind, more so than the crown’s birds, and he gets the sense that the birds agree.

“Good morning,” the man says, grinning a toothy, sharp grin. Jamie is there to photograph; there’s an interview later in the day, but only after the subject of said interview has had a chance to care for the birds.

One of the birds perks up, croaks, “Good morning, good morning,” and flutters off to perch. It’s an eerie thing, and Jamie is not too sure what to make of it but his confusion must have been obvious, as the man, one Malcolm Tucker, ravenmaster of ten years now, laughs at him.

“Troublesome cunts,” Malcolm says, shaking his hand. “MacDonald, yeah? They know fresh meat when they see it, and you’re about as fresh as it gets.”

He's not that fresh, not really, not for years, but he is new and he smiles and shrugs. “Do they often try to surprise newcomers?” Jamie asks. He hefts his camera as Malcolm kneels before one of his charges. The photo makes itself, the bird and the man who can speak back to it.

“Always.” He murmurs something to the bird at his feet, some comfort to the creature unable to fly free. “Everybody has to find their own fun, yeah? When you’re trapped like this lot, you do what you can. I’m going to mostly ignore you, if that’s all right.”

Jamie nods. “That’s actually perfect.”

He looks at him as though assessing him, and a chill goes through Jamie, though he’s not sure why. “They might not. You’re best off letting them do what they like.”

“Of course,” he says. As assignments go, it’s a fairly simple one. Watch the ravenmaster with his birds, photograph the everyday life. It’s a relaxing shift from his usual assignments, the assignments that a young and hungry photographer might take, the sort of things that had nearly gotten him killed more than a handful of times over the previous decade. Covering crime at home, wars abroad, man-made fucking disasters and natural ones as well. He tells himself that it’s a relief to watch a walking tourist attraction who cares for a handful of birds. If somewhat uninteresting.

But as he watches them, he finds that there seems to be very little difference between the man and the ravens; they walk as he does, slightly hunched and always curious, wings drawn tight and eyes sharp and learning. His eyes are the color of the sky, bright and gray-blue and deceptively calm, and Jamie is sure that they would change as the sky does.

With a raven perched on his covered forearm, he looks at Jamie, they both do, and that chill returns—“fresh meat” was the phrase Malcolm had used earlier. The raven is hungry yet. “Come along, Mabel,” Malcolm says to her, but his stormy eyes remain on Jamie and his camera. “I know you tried to skip breakfast, but I’ll not let you miss the most important meal of the day.”

Jamie follows at a distance, careful to stay out of the way of the other five birds. When Malcolm feeds the bird, he is gentle, his face close to hers as she eats from his hand other. How much of this is a show for Jamie’s camera is unknown, but if it’s a show, it’s a well-practiced one. The bird flies to her perch as soon as she’s done, uttering thanks as she leaves him sitting on a bench near the coop. “Does that one not like breakfast?” Jamie asks.

Malcolm shrugs, leans back against the wall, and folds his hands in his lap. “She likes it as much as any of them,” he says. “Sometimes she just gets unhappy and doesn’t want to eat. Birds can be sad, just like us, you know.”

“I’ve heard they’re very smart.” He’s snapping photos as he talks, hoping that he can capture at least some of what, even through the slightly ridiculous formal uniform, he sees: a man coiled tight for take-off, eyes flickering across the landscape before him, watching the ravens at play. A glint of cold iron around one ankle—part of the uniform, Jamie assumes, though he can't fathom its purpose and he can't recall seeing it on other yeomen wardens—reminiscent of the bands that the birds themselves bear above their talons. The tilt of his head as he notices something slightly off, a sharp profile and the eyes of a scavenger always looking for the next prize, the next opportunity, the next tragedy he can use to his own advantage.

Malcolm turns those eyes on him, and if most people would shrink back, something wild in Jamie makes him lean forward instead. “They’re smarter than most people,” Malcolm says. “Do you know, they can make friends?”

“Social bonds, yeah.”

“No, friends,” Malcolm says. “Not just with each other, either. Other species, too.”

“What,” Jamie asks, “like humans?”

He nods and shrugs at the same time, and then unfurls himself and stands. Skinny-shouldered, he stoops a little as he talks to Jamie. “Humans, yeah, sometimes. But I meant wolves, son.”

Malcolm has been ravenmaster for ten years, but Jamie's not convinced. There's an agelessness to him, a man outside of time, and there's the hunt in him as well. Jamie shifts uncomfortably under his unblinking stare. Coughing, he finally turns away, busying himself with a lens change. “Do your birds come into a lot of contact with wolves, then?”

“Not usually. They don’t come into a lot of contact with very much at all except brainless tourists. Wings are clipped, you see. We keep the seven because if the ravens ever left, as the legend goes, the empire would fall.” He pauses, grins wryly, and adds, “Not sure that'd be a bad thing, but God save the fucking queen, right.”

There’s a slight bitterness in his tone, something that Jamie’s not sure just anyone would pick up on. It’s minimal, gone so quickly that he half wonders if he’d simply imagined it. Hesitantly, he asks, “Is that what makes them unhappy?”

“A luxurious prison, even one that exists for your own well-being, is still a prison,” Malcolm says. He smiles, then, and looks back out at the green. “Ah, but they don’t know they’re in prison, do they? Can you ache for freedom if you’ve never tasted it?”

“I think so,” Jamie says. “You might not have a name for what’s missing, but you know it’s missing anyway.”

His smile falters at that, then disappears entirely. “Maybe. I like to think they’re mostly happy.”

“At least they’re in a group, that’s got to help.” He takes a photo of two of them frolicking, flying as much as they can around each other. “And you as well, they like you don’t they?”

Malcolm shrugs. “The feeling is mutual. Off the record? They’re the only people I can stand, most days.”

He doesn’t try to correct Malcolm on calling them people, and he doesn’t admit to himself that it’s because he understands fully. Another photo, this time of a raven leaning over to peck at its friend, as a third flies towards them. He counts the whole set of them quickly, careful not to leave out Mabel who had settled into her coop. “I thought you said there were seven in total, not six?”

“There are,” Malcolm says. “The seventh is in reserve.”

Jamie frowns. “In reserve where?”

Malcolm doesn’t answer, only shrugs as he walks to his birds. “Come by whenever you like,” he calls back. “Only ever seem to get the dimmest, rudest sacks of cum around here these days. The ravens won’t mind seeing you again.”

There is, Jamie swears, a clipped feather drifting to the ground in his wake.

**Author's Note:**

> So the idea is that Malcolm in this AU is a shapeshifter and the seventh raven; the metal Jamie glimpses is meant to be a single iron shackle, trapping Malcolm in human (or human-ish) form. There are a lot of different ideas about iron and supernatural creatures, but for the purpose of this story, it dampens magic.


End file.
